Civil rights movement in South Africa (18931914)

Main article: Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi in South Africa

Gandhi in South Africa (1895)
Gandhi spent 21 years in South Africa, where he developed his political views, ethics and political leadership
skills. Indians in South Africa were led by wealthy Muslims, who employed Gandhi as a lawyer, and by impoverished
Hindu indentured laborers with very limited rights. Gandhi considered them all to be Indians, taking a lifetime view that
"Indianness" transcended religion and caste. He believed he could bridge historic differences, especially regarding
religion, and he took that belief back to India where he tried to implement it. The South African experience exposed
handicaps to Gandhi that he had not known about. He realised he was out of contact with the enormous complexities
of religious and cultural life in India, and believed he understood India by getting to know and leading Indians in South
Africa.
[26]

In South Africa, Gandhi faced the discrimination directed at all coloured people. He was thrown off a train
at Pietermaritzburg after refusing to move from the first-class. He protested and was allowed on first class the next
day.
[27]
Travelling farther on by stagecoach, he was beaten by a driver for refusing to move to make room for a
European passenger.
[28]
He suffered other hardships on the journey as well, including being barred from several
hotels. In another incident, the magistrate of a Durban court ordered Gandhi to remove his turban, which he refused to
do.
[29]

These events were a turning point in Gandhi's life and shaped his social activism and awakened him to social
injustice. After witnessing racism,prejudice and injustice against Indians in South Africa, Gandhi began to question his
place in society and his people's standing in the British Empire.
[30]

Gandhi extended his original period of stay in South Africa to assist Indians in opposing a bill to deny them the right to
vote. Though unable to halt the bill's passage, his campaign was successful in drawing attention to the grievances of
Indians in South Africa. He helped found the Natal Indian Congress in 1894,
[13][27]
and through this organisation, he
moulded the Indian community of South Africa into a unified political force. In January 1897, when Gandhi landed in
Durban, a mob of white settlers attacked him and he escaped only through the efforts of the wife of the police
superintendent. He, however, refused to press charges against any member of the mob, stating it was one of his
principles not to seek redress for a personal wrong in a court of law.
[13]

In 1906, the Transvaal government promulgated a new Act compelling registration of the colony's Indian population. At
a mass protest meeting held in Johannesburg on 11 September that year, Gandhi adopted his still evolving
methodology of Satyagraha (devotion to the truth), or non-violent protest, for the first time.
[31]
He urged Indians to defy
the new law and to suffer the punishments for doing so. The community adopted this plan, and during the ensuing
seven-year struggle, thousands of Indians were jailed, flogged, or shot for striking, refusing to register, for burning
their registration cards or engaging in other forms of non-violent resistance. The government successfully repressed
the Indian protesters, but the public outcry over the harsh treatment of peaceful Indian protesters by the South African
government forced South African leader Jan Christiaan Smuts, himself a philosopher, to negotiate a compromise with
Gandhi. Gandhi's ideas took shape, and the concept of Satyagraha matured during this struggle.
Gandhi and the Africans


M.K. Gandhi while serving in the Ambulance Corps during theSecond Boer War (1899)
Gandhi focused his attention on Indians while in South Africa and felt degraded that Indians were treated the same
level as native Africans.
[32][33][34]
Historians have also examined his changing ideas on the proper role for black Africans.
White rule enforced strict segregation among all races and generated conflict between these communities. At first
Gandhi shared racial notions prevalent of the times. Bhana and Vahed argue that Gandhi's experiences in jail
sensitized him to the plight of blacks. "His negative views in the Johannesburg jail were reserved for hardened African
prisoners rather than Africans generally."
[35]

In 1906, the British declared war against the Zulu kingdom in Natal. Gandhi actively encouraged the British to recruit
Indians. He argued that Indians should support the war efforts in order to legitimise their claims to full citizenship. The
British accepted Gandhi's offer to let a detachment of 20 Indians volunteer as a stretcher-bearer corps to treat
wounded British soldiers. This corps was commanded by Gandhi and operated for less than two months.
[36]
The
experience taught him it was hopeless to directly challenge the overwhelming military power of the British armyhe
decided it could only be resisted in non-violent fashion by the pure of heart.
[37]

After the black majority came to power in South Africa, Gandhi was proclaimed a national hero with numerous
monuments.
[38]

First Satyagraha
Gandhi, the exponent of the Satyagraha movement, staged his first satyagraha in Champaran, in Bihar. It was in
1917. The poor peasants, the indigo growers, of the district invited Gandhi to go there to see for himself the
grievances of the much exploited peasants there.

Champaran was on the North-western corner of the Bihar Province. The River Gandak flows through this area. The
river changed its course from time to time, leaving large lakes along its dried up courses. It was along the banks of
these lakes the indigo factories were set up.

There were two towns and three thousands villages in Champaran. 98 per cent of the people out of the 2 million
lived in villages. And most of them were Hindus. Indigo farming was going on there for almost two centuries.

In the beginning, the land was owned by the local people. But the white people from Britain grabbed the land and
instead of the traditional sugar cane cultivation, the land grabbers compelled the people to enter into indigo
cultivation.

The British Indigo planters coerced the poor people to grow indigo on 15 per cent of their land and part with the
whole crop for rent. Indigo cultivation was profitable only for the British. The local peasants had only misery and
penury and poverty.

It was on hearing about this predicament of the poor farmers there that Gandhi decided to go there. He left for
Champaran along with a Bihari called Rajkumar Shukla.

Babu Rajendra Prasad, who was to become the chairman of the Constituent Assembly for drafting a constitution for
the new Republic of India, and who became the first President of the Republic of India, was not there, as he was
practicing in the far away Patna as an advocate. He was a special person with lot of interest in public affairs and so
Gandhi went straight to his house to find that he was away in Patna.